Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Cory Doctorow

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• Publié par: umkou
• Publié le: 01 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 69
• Langue: English

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Title: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Author: Cory Doctorow Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8086C] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 13, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: US-ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DOWN AND OUT IN MAGIC KINGDOM ***

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Cory Doctorow

Copyright © 2003 Cory Doctorow [e-mail] http://www.craphound.com/down Tor Books, January 2003 ISBN: 0765304368

Blurbs: He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow! Bruce Sterling Author,The Hacker CrackdownandDistraction In the true spirit of Walt Disney, Doctorow has ripped a part of our common culture, mixed it with a brilliant story, and burned into our culture a new set of memes that will be with us for a generation at least. Lawrence Lessig Author,The Future of Ideas Cory Doctorow doesn’t just write about the futur … think he lives there. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom isn’t just a really good read, it’s also, like the best kind of fiction, a kind of guide book. See the Tomorrowland of Tomorrow today, and while you’re there, why not drop by Frontierland, and the Haunted Mansion as well? (It’s the Mansion that’s the haunted heart of this book.) Cory makes me feel nostalgic for the futur … dizzying, yet rather pleasant sensation, as if I’m spiraling down the tracks of Space Mountain over and over again. Visit the Magic Kingdom and live forever! Kelly Link Author,Stranger Things Happen Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the most entertaining and exciting science fiction story I’ve read in the last few years. I love page-turners, especially when they are as unusual as this novel. I predict big things for Down and Out—it could easily become a breakout genre-buster. Mark Frauenfelder Contributing Editor,Wired Magazine Imagine you woke up one day and Walt Disney had taken over the world. Not only that, but money’s been abolished and somebody’s developed the Cure for Death. Welcome to the Bitchun Society—and make sure you’re strapped in tight, because it’s going to be a wild ride. In a world where everyone’s wishes can come true, one man returns to the original, crumbling city of dreams—Disney World. Here in the spiritual center of the Bitchun Society he struggles to find and preserve the original, human face of the Magic Kingdom against the young, post-human and increasingly alien inheritors of the Earth. Now that any experience can be simulated, human relationships become ever more fragile; and to Julius, the corny, mechanical ghosts of the Haunted Mansion have come to seem like a precious link to a past when we could tell the real from the simulated, the true from the false. Cory Doctorow—cultural critic, Disneyphile, and ultimate Early Adopter—uses language with the reckless confidence of the Beat poets. Yet behind the dazzling prose and vibrant characters lie ideas we should all pay heed to. The future rushes on like a plummeting roller coaster, and it’s hard to see where we’re going. But at least with this book Doctorow has given us a map of the park. Karl Schroeder Author,Pemrnaneec Cory Doctorow is the most interesting new SF writer I’ve come across in years. He starts out at the point where older SF writers’ speculations end. It’s a distinct pleasure to give him some Whuffie. Rudy Rucker Author,elanSpacd Cory Doctorow rocks! I check his blog about ten times a day, because he’s always one of the first to notice a major incursion from the social-technological-pop-cultural future, and his voice is a compelling vehicle for news from the future. Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom is about a world that is visible in its outlines today, if you know where to look, from reputation systems to peer-to-peer adhocracies. Doctorow knows where to look, and how to word-paint the rest of us into the picture. Howard Rheingold Author,Smart Mobs Doctorow is more than just a sick mind looking to twist the perceptions of those whose realities remain uncorrupted - though that should be enough recommendation to read his work.Down and Out in the   Magic Kingdomis black comedic, sci-fi prophecy on the dangers of surrendering our consensual hallucination to the regime. Fun to read, but difficult to sleep afterwards. Douglas Rushkoff Author ofCyberiaandMedia Virus! “Wow! Disney imagineering meets nanotechnology, the reputation economy, and Ray Kurzweil’s transhuman future. As much fun as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and as packed with mind bending ideas about social changes cascading from the frontiers of science.” Tim O’Reilly Publisher and Founder, O’Reilly and Associates Doctorow has created a rich and exciting vision of the future, and then wrote a page-turner of a story in it. I couldn’t put the book down.

Bruce Schneier Author,Secrets and Lies

Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you’re going to find.

Gardner Dozois Editor,Asimov’s SF

Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” tells a gripping, fast-paced story that hinges on thought-provoking extrapolation from today’s technical realities. This is the sort of book that captures and defines the spirit of a turning point in human history when our tools remake ourselves and our world. Mitch Kapor Founder, Lotus, Inc., co-founder Electronic Frontier Foundation

A note about this book: “D  words-on-paperown and Out in the Magic Kingdom” is my first novel. It’s an actual, no-foolin’ book, published by the good people at Tor Books in New York City. You can buy this book in stores or online, by following links like this one: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765304368/downandoutint-20 So, what’s with this file? Good question. I’m releasing the entire text of this book as a free, freely redistributable e-book. You can download it, put it on a P2P net, put it on your site, email it to a friend, and, if you’re addicted to dead trees, you can even print it. Why am I doing this thing? Well, it’s a long story, but to shorten it up: first-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don’t have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth. I’m not bad at word-of-mouth. I have a blog, Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net), where I do alotof word-of-mouthing. I compulsively tell friends and strangers about things that I like. And telling people about stuff I like isway,wayeasier if I can just send it to ’em. Way easier. What’s more, P2P nets kick all kinds of ass. Most of the books, music and movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put just abouteverythingonline. What’s more, they’ve done it for cheaper than any other archiving/revival effort ever. I’m a stone infovore and this kinda Internet mishegas gives me a serious frisson of futurosity. Yeah, there are legal problems. Yeah, it’s hard to figure out how people are gonna make money doing it. Yeah, there is a lot of social upheaval and a serious threat to innovation, freedom, business, and whatnot. It’s your basic end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, and as a science fiction writer, end-of- the-world-as-we-know-it scenaria are my stock-in-trade. I’m especially grateful to my publisher, Tor Books (/:w/wwt.thptor.com) and my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (e/moc.neilortcelie/n:/tpydhaenlsthte) for being hep enough to let me try out this experiment. All that said, here’s the deal: I’m releasing this book under a license developed by the Creative Commons project (vetimmco/s/.po:nge/acorrttha project that lets people like me roll our own). This is license agreements for the distribution of our creative work under terms similar to those employed by the Free/Open Source Software movement. It’s a great project, and I’m proud to be a part of it. Here’s a summary of the license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0 Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the original author credit. No Derivative Works. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the work—not derivative works based on it. 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Table of Contents Blurbs About this book PROLOGUE CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 Acknowledgments About the Author Other books by Cory Doctorow

“Figured it out, huh? I’ve just come off my fifth in twenty years—counterrevolutionaries hidden out in the old Cheyenne Mountain NORAD site, still there a generation later.” He sandpapered his whiskers with his fingertips. “Their parents went to ground after their life’s savings vanished, and they had no use for tech any more advanced than a rifle. Plenty of those, though.” He spun a fascinating yarn then, how he slowly gained the acceptance of the mountain-dwellers, and then their trust, and then betrayed it in subtle, beneficent ways: introducing Free Energy to their greenhouses, then a gengineered crop or two, then curing a couple deaths, slowly inching them toward the Bitchun Society, until they couldn’t remember why they hadn’t wanted to be a part of it from the start. Now they were mostly off-world, exploring toy frontiers with unlimited energy and unlimited supplies and deadheading through the dull times en route. “I guess it’d be too much of a shock for them to stay on-world. They think of us as the enemy, you know—they had all kinds of plans drawn up for when we invaded them and took them away; hollow suicide teeth, booby-traps, fall-back-and-rendezvous points for the survivors. They just can’t get over hating us, even though we don’t even know they exist. Off-world, they can pretend that they’re still living rough and hard.” He rubbed his chin again, his hard calluses grating over his whiskers. “But for me, the real rough life is right here, on-world. The little enclaves, each one is like an alternate history of humanity—what if we’d taken the Free Energy, but not deadheading? What if we’d taken deadheading, but only for the critically ill, not for people who didn’t want to be bored on long bus-rides? Or no hyperlinks, no ad-hocracy, no Whuffie? Each one is different and wonderful.” I have a stupid habit of arguing for the sake of, and I found myself saying, “Wonderful? Oh sure, nothing finer than, oh, let’s see, dying, starving, freezing, broiling, killing, cruelty and ignorance and pain and misery. I know I sure miss it.” Keep A-Movin’ Dan snorted. “You think a junkie misses sobriety?” I knocked on the bar. “Hello! There aren’t any junkies anymore!” He struck another cig. “But you know what a junkieis, right? Junkies don’t miss sobriety, because they don’t remember how sharp everything was, how the pain made the joy sweeter. We can’t remember what it was like to work to earn our keep; to worry that there might not beenough, that we might get sick or get hit by a bus. We don’t remember what it was like to take chances, and we sure as shit don’t remember what it felt like to have them pay off.” He had a point. Here I was, only in my second or third adulthood, and already ready to toss it all in and do something,anything, else. He had a point—but I wasn’t about to admit it. “So you say. I say, I take a chance when I strike up a conversation in a bar, when I fall in love …And what about the deadheads? Two people I know, they just went deadhead for ten thousand years! Tell me that’s not taking a chance!” Truth be told, almost everyone I’d known in my eighty-some years were deadheading or jaunting or justgone. Lonely days, then. “Brother, that’s committing half-assed suicide. The way we’re going, they’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t just switch ’em off when it comes time to reanimate. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s getting a little crowded around here ” . I made pish-tosh sounds and wiped off my forehead with a bar-napkin—the Gazoo was beastly hot on summer nights. “Uh-huh, just like the world was getting a little crowded a hundred years ago, before Free Energy. Like it was getting too greenhousey, too nukey, too hot or too cold. We fixed it then, we’ll fix it again when the time comes. I’m gonna be here in ten thousand years, you damn betcha, but I think I’ll do it the long way around ” . He cocked his head again, and gave it some thought. If it had been any of the other grad students, I’d have assumed he was grepping for some bolstering factoids to support his next sally. But with him, I just knew he was thinking about it, the old-fashioned way. “I think that if I’m still here in ten thousand years, I’m going to be crazy as hell. Ten thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, the state-of-the-art was a goat. You really think you’re going to be anything recognizably human in a hundred centuries? Me, I’m not interested in being a post-person. I’m going to wake up one day, and I’m going to say, ‘Well, I guess I’ve seen about enough,’ and that’ll be my last day. ” I had seen where he was going with this, and I had stopped paying attention while I readied my response. I probably should have paid more attention. “But why? Why not just deadhead for a few centuries, see if there’s anything that takes your fancy, and if not, back to sleep for a few more? Why do anything sofinal?” He embarrassed me by making a show of thinking it over again, making me feel like I was just a half- pissed glib poltroon. “I suppose it’s because nothing else is. I’ve always known that someday, I was going to stop moving, stop seeking, stop kicking, and have done with it. There’ll come a day when I don’t have anything left to do, except stop.” O  Dan, because of hisn campus, they called him Keep-A-Movin’ cowboy vibe and because of his lifestyle, and he somehow grew to take over every conversation I had for the next six months. I pinged his Whuffie a few times, and noticed that it was climbing steadily upward as he accumulated more esteem from the people he met. I’d pretty much pissed away most of my Whuffie—all the savings from the symphonies and the first three theses—drinking myself stupid at the Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I’d expended all the respect anyone had ever afforded me. All except Dan, who, for some reason, stood me to regular beers and meals and movies. I got to feeling like I was someone special—not everyone had a chum as exotic as Keep-A-Movin’ Dan, the legendary missionary who visited the only places left that were closed to the Bitchun Society. I can’t say for sure why he hung around with me. He mentioned once or twice that he’d liked my symphonies, and he’d read my Ergonomics thesis on applying theme-park crowd-control techniques in urban settings, and liked what I had to say there. But I think it came down to us having a good time needling each other. I’d talk to him about the vast carpet of the future unrolling before us, of the certainty that we would encounter alien intelligences some day, of the unimaginable frontiers open to each of us. He’d tell me that deadheading was a strong indicator that one’s personal reservoir of introspection and creativity was dry; and that without struggle, there is no real victory.

This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without resolving. I’d get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you more accurately gauged your success. And then he’d lead me down a subtle, carefully baited trail that led to my allowing that while, yes, we might someday encounter alien species with wild and fabulous ways, that right now, there was a slightly depressing homogeneity to the world. On a fine spring day, I defended my thesis to two embodied humans and one prof whose body was out for an overhaul, whose consciousness was present via speakerphone from the computer where it was resting. They all liked it. I collected my sheepskin and went out hunting for Dan in the sweet, flower- stinking streets. He’d gone. The Anthro major he’d been torturing with his war-stories said that they’d wrapped up that morning, and he’d headed to the walled city of Tijuana, to take his shot with the descendants of a platoon of US Marines who’d settled there and cut themselves off from the Bitchun Society. So I went to Disney World. In deference to Dan, I took the flight in realtime, in the minuscule cabin reserved for those of us who stubbornly refused to be frozen and stacked like cordwood for the two hour flight. I was the only one taking the trip in realtime, but a flight attendant dutifully served me a urine-sample-sized orange juice and a rubbery, pungent, cheese omelet. I stared out the windows at the infinite clouds while the autopilot banked around the turbulence, and wondered when I’d see Dan next.

CHAPTER 1 M y girlfriend was 15 percent of my age, and I was old-fashioned enough that it bugged me. Her name was Lil, and she was second-generation Disney World, her parents being among the original ad-hocracy that took over the management of Liberty Square and Tom Sawyer Island. She was, quite literally, raised in Walt Disney World and it showed. It showed. She was neat and efficient in her every little thing, from her shining red hair to her careful accounting of each gear and cog in the animatronics that were in her charge. Her folks were in canopic jars in Kissimmee, deadheading for a few centuries. On a muggy Wednesday, we dangled our feet over the edge of the Liberty Belle’s riverboat pier, watching the listless Confederate flag over Fort Langhorn on Tom Sawyer Island by moonlight. The Magic Kingdom was all closed up and every last guest had been chased out the gate underneath the Main Street train station, and we were able to breathe a heavy sigh of relief, shuck parts of our costumes, and relax together while the cicadas sang. I was more than a century old, but there was still a kind of magic in having my arm around the warm, fine shoulders of a girl by moonlight, hidden from the hustle of the cleaning teams by the turnstiles, breathing the warm, moist air. Lil plumped her head against my shoulder and gave me a butterfly kiss under my jaw. “Her name was McGill,” I sang, gently. “But she called herself Lil,” she sang, warm breath on my collarbones. “And everyone knew her as Nancy,” I sang. I’d been startled to know that she knew the Beatles. They’d been old news in my youth, after all. But her parents had given her a thorough—if eclectic—education. “Want to do a walk-through?” she asked. It was one of her favorite duties, exploring every inch of the rides in her care with the lights on, after the horde of tourists had gone. We both liked to see the underpinnings of the magic. Maybe that was why I kept picking at the relationship. “I’m a little pooped. Let’s sit a while longer, if you don’t mind.” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Oh, all right. Old man.” She reached up and gently tweaked my nipple, and I gave a satisfying little jump. I think the age difference bothered her, too, though she teased me for letting it get to me. “I think I’ll be able to manage a totter through the Haunted Mansion, if you just give me a moment to rest my bursitis.” I felt her smile against my shirt. She loved the Mansion; loved to turn on the ballroom ghosts and dance their waltz with them on the dusty floor, loved to try and stare down the marble busts in the library that followed your gaze as you passed. I liked it too, but I really liked just sitting there with her, watching the water and the trees. I was just getting ready to go when I heard a softpingmy cochlea. “Damn,” I said. “I’ve got a call.”inside “Tell them you’re busy,” she said. I will,” I said, and answered the call subvocally. “Julius here.” “ “Hi, Julius. It’s Dan. You got a minute?” I knew a thousand Dans, but I recognized the voice immediately, though it’d been ten years since we last got drunk at the Gazoo together. I muted the subvocal and said, “Lil, I’ve got to take this. Do you mind?” “Oh,no, not at all ” she sarcased at me. She sat up and pulled out her crack pipe and lit up. , “Dan,” I subvocalized, “long time no speak.” “Yeah, buddy, it sure has been,” he said, and his voice cracked on a sob. I turned and gave Lil such a look, she dropped her pipe. “How can I help?” she said, softly but swiftly. I waved her off and switched the phone to full-vocal mode. My voice sounded unnaturally loud in the cricket-punctuated calm. “Where you at, Dan?” I asked. “Down here, in Orlando. I’m stuck out on Pleasure Island.” “All right,” I said. “Meet me at, uh, the Adventurer’s Club, upstairs on the couch by the door. I’ll be there in—” I shot a look at Lil, who knew the castmember-only roads better than I. She flashed ten fingers at me. “Ten minutes.” “Okay,” he said. “Sorry.” He had his voice back under control. I switched off. “What’s up?” Lil asked. “I’m not sure. An old friend is in town. He sounds like he’s got a problem.” Lil pointed a finger at me and made a trigger-squeezing gesture. “There,” she said. “I’ve just dumped the best route to Pleasure Island to your public directory. Keep me in the loop, okay?” I set off for the utilidoor entrance near the Hall of Presidents and booted down the stairs to the hum of the underground tunnel-system. I took the slidewalk to cast parking and zipped my little cart out to Pleasure Island. I couch underneath rows of faked-up trophy shots with humorousfound Dan sitting on the L-shaped captions. Downstairs, castmembers were working the animatronic masks and idols, chattering with the guests. Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and stubbled. He had raccoon-mask bags under his eyes and he slumped listlessly. As I approached, I pinged his Whuffie and was startled to see that it had dropped to nearly zero. “Jesus,” I said, as I sat down next to him. “You look like hell, Dan.” He nodded. “Appearances can be deceptive,” he said. “But in this case, they’re bang-on.” “You want to talk about it?” I asked. “Somewhere else, huh? I hear they ring in the New Year every night at midnight; I think that’d be a little too much for me right now.” I led him out to my cart and cruised back to the place I shared with Lil, out in Kissimmee. He smoked eight cigarettes on the twenty minute ride, hammering one after another into his mouth, filling my runabout with stinging clouds. I kept glancing at him in the rear-view. He had his eyes closed, and in

repose he looked dead. I could hardly believe that this was my vibrant action-hero pal of yore. Surreptitiously, I called Lil’s phone. “I’m bringing him home,” I subvocalized. “He’s in rough shape. Not sure what it’s all about.” “I’ll make up the couch,” she said. “And get some coffee together. Love you.” “Back atcha, kid,” I said. As we approached the tacky little swaybacked ranch-house, he opened his eyes. “You’re a pal, Jules.” I waved him off. “No, really. I tried to think of who I could call, and you were the only one. I’ve missed you, bud.” “Lil said she’d put some coffee on, I said. “You sound like you need it.” ” Lil was waiting on the sofa, a folded blanket and an extra pillow on the side table, a pot of coffee and some Disneyland Beijing mugs beside them. She stood and extended her hand. “I’m Lil,” she said. “Dan,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.” I knew she was pinging his Whuffie and I caught her look of surprised disapproval. Us oldsters who predate Whuffie know that it’s important; but to the kids, it’s theworld. Someone without any is automatically suspect. I watched her recover quickly, smile, and surreptitiously wipe her hand on her jeans. “Coffee?” she said. “Oh, yeah,” Dan said, and slumped on the sofa. She poured him a cup and set it on a coaster on the coffee table. “I’ll let you boys catch up, then,” she said, and started for the bedroom. “No,” Dan said. “Wait. If you don’t mind. I think it’d help if I could talk to someone … younger, too. ” She set her face in the look of chirpy helpfulness that all the second-gen castmembers have at their instant disposal and settled into an armchair. She pulled out her pipe and lit a rock. I went through my crack period before she was born, just after they made it decaf, and I always felt old when I saw her and her friends light up. Dan surprised me by holding out a hand to her and taking the pipe. He toked heavily, then passed it back. Dan closed his eyes again, then ground his fists into them, sipped his coffee. It was clear he was trying to figure out where to start. “I believed that I was braver than I really am, is what it boils down to,” he said. “Who doesn’t?” I said. “I really thought I could do it. I knew that someday I’d run out of things to do, things to see. I knew that I’d finish some day. You remember, we used to argue about it. I swore I’d be done, and that would be the end of it. And now I am. There isn’t a single place left on-world that isn’t part of the Bitchun Society. There isn’t a single thing left that I want any part of.” “So deadhead for a few centuries,” I said. “Put the decision off.” “No!” he shouted, startling both of us. “I’mdone. It’sover.” “So do it,” Lil said. “Ican’this hands. He cried like a baby, in great, snoring sobs,” he sobbed, and buried his face in that shook his whole body. Lil went into the kitchen and got some tissue, and passed it to me. I sat alongside him and awkwardly patted his back. “Jesus,” he said, into his palms. “Jesus.” “Dan?” I said, quietly. He sat up and took the tissue, wiped off his face and hands. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve tried to make a go of it, really I have. I’ve spent the last eight years in Istanbul, writing papers on my missions, about the communities. I did some followup studies, interviews. No one was interested. Not even me. I smoked a lot of hash. It didn’t help. So, one morning I woke up and went to the bazaar and said good bye to the friends I’d made there. Then I went to a pharmacy and had the man make me up a lethal injection. He wished me good luck and I went back to my rooms. I sat there with the hypo all afternoon, then I decided to sleep on it, and I got up the next morning and did it all over again. I looked inside myself, and I saw that I didn’t have the guts. I just didn’t have the guts. I’ve stared down the barrels of a hundred guns, had a thousand knives pressed up against my throat, but I didn’t have the guts to press that button.” “You were too late,” Lil said. We both turned to look at her. “You were a decade too late. Look at you. You’re pathetic. If you killed yourself right now, you’d just be a washed-up loser who couldn’t hack it. If you’d done it ten years earlier, you would’ve been going out on top—a champion, retiring permanently.” She set her mug down with a harder-than- necessary clunk. Sometimes, Lil and I are right on the same wavelength. Sometimes, it’s like she’s on a different planet. All I could do was sit there, horrified, and she was happy to discuss the timing of my pal’s suicide. But she was right. Dan nodded heavily, and I saw that he knew it, too. “A day late and a dollar short,” he sighed. “Well, don’t just sit there,” she said. “You know what you’ve got to do.” “What?” I said, involuntarily irritated by her tone. She looked at me like I was being deliberately stupid. “He’s got to get back on top. Cleaned up, dried out, into some productive work. Get that Whuffie up, too.Thenhe can kill himself with dignity.” It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. Dan, though, was cocking an eyebrow at her and thinking hard. “How old did you say you were?” he asked. “Twenty-three,” she said. “Wish I’d had your smarts at twenty-three,” he said, and heaved a sigh, straightening up. “Can I stay here while I get the job done?” I looked askance at Lil, who considered for a moment, then nodded. “Sure, pal, sure,” I said. I clapped him on the shoulder. “You look beat.” “Beat doesn’t begin to cover it,” he said. “Good night, then,” I said.